Young Advisors are young people aged between 15 and 21, who stimulate social action by showing community leaders and decision makers how to engage young people in community life, local decision making and improving services.

Working through a social enterprise model, we deliver public service reform helping direct limited resources to where it is needed most.

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Yes, we're at it again! The annual YA residential is taking place at the end of July in Castleton. You can book your free place on our residential by clicking here

More information about the centre and the programme can me found by clicking here

REMEMBER, PLACES ARE LIMITED TO 4 PER TEAM, INCLUDING LEAD OFFICERS.

Virgin Media and Virgin Unite are providing an amazing opportunity to catapult young people towards a fantastic future!

Virgin Media Pioneers introduces The Project – an initiative that will provide training, an enterprise qualification and work placements for 100 young people over three weeks during summer 2012. They are seeking applicants aged 18-29 from all sorts of backgrounds across the UK and want to appeal to young people who have an interest in gaining employment, or building a business, in the creative and/or events sectors. Click here for more info.

To read about what our Weymouth & Portland YAs have been doing with community Pharmacists in their area click here This group have also been working with their host organisation, Synergy Housing, to consult with residents around what improvements they want made in their community; to read about this work click here

The High Sheriff of Merseyside, Professor Helen Carty, went on a fact-finding visit to the Sefton Young Advisors in March 2012. During her visit, Professor Carty learnt about the report, video and leaflet the YAs have produced on their stroke awareness programme (which you can see further down this homepage).

Sefton Young Advisors manager, Dan Copley, said: “We were delighted that the High Sheriff was able to spare the time to visit us and find out more about our work. It was also a great opportunity for us to highlight the work we have done around strokes which can affect anyone, even children and babies.”

Click here to look at an online article which tells you more about the visit!

Last month YAs from Haringey hosted a Youth Conference which was attended by Housing Association professionals, young people and youth workers. The event was designed and delivered by the Young Advisors team, with expert adult speakers, including MP David Lammy, contributing to the day. To read more about the event click here

Two moths ago, 22 NCS graduates at Bolton Lads and Girls club were trained as Young Advisors.

The group are currently working alongside a small charity called Refugee Welcome Trust. They met with Amy who started the charity to discuss what the charity is all about, and ways in which the Young Advisors could get involved. The Refugee Welcome Trust provides assistance for refugees to allow them to establish their life in the UK and also provides support with aspects of family reunion to speed up the process and make it less stressful for the families involved.

The Young Advisors are currently in the process of starting a campaign to raise awareness of the Refugee Welcome Trust and hopefully raise some funds to help move the charity forward in reuniting families that have been broken up.

The Young Advisors have already had a great response to the work with this charity and have looked at a number of options to meet with other organisations and charities to discuss ways that they can help.

Bolton Young Advisors are also currently working with a number of agencies from across Greater Manchester on a project to raise awareness about World Mental Health day, and planning an event to take place on October 13th. They have been attending meetings at Salford University to discuss options on how to build up to the big event. These plans are ongoing and they have another meeting scheduled early April in which the various groups involved will be bringing forward ideas and ways to move forward. We hope this event is a great success!

Bolton Lads and Girls Club have a huge Oxfam and YMCA led event coming up on 22nd March, which will involve young people from all over the country. Six of their Young Advisors have been asked to develop a workshop on an aspect of their NCS programme they felt inspired by. They will be required to deliver a 50 minute programme to young people aged 15 – 20 that is interactive and exciting to get their message across. The young people have had several planning meetings and developed some great ideas to deliver a programme on how to campaign and make a difference: Where To Start, What To Do and How To Do It.

Philip Crandle from Bolton Lads and Girls Club said: :The Young Advisors are particularly excited about this event and are using the Young Advisors training they have had to put their skills into action. We will continue to promote the good work the young people are doing, and advise and guide them into other opportunities in the near future".

... All this only two months after training, good job Bolton Young Advisors!

Baroness Newlove visited Sefton Young Advisors in January 2012 to hear about their work in the local area. Sefton Young Advisors said:

"It was great to meet her and she was really interested in our work around anti-social behaviour. During her day with us, she took part in a workshop we ran with local young people about their views on crime and anti-social behaviour".

Following the visit, Sefton YAs have been highlighted as a case study in her Government paper: Building Safe, Active Communities. Great job Sefton, as always!

You can view the paper below. Sefton YAs are on page 73!

Sefton Young Advisors were commissioned by NHS Sefton to do a really exciting piece of work looking at raising awareness of the causes, signs and symptoms of stroke. The YAs worked alongside the Stroke Association teams and local community groups to encourage people to get health checks. The YAs also produced a leaflet and a video covering some of the risk factors that can cause strokes and also the symptoms of a stroke. You can view both the leaflet and video here!

The Sefton YAs will also be delivering sessions to young people in their area so that they can spread awareness to their families, carers, friends; to try to make a difference to the wider community and future generations.

Take a look at the leaflet and the video the YAs produced below:

YAs in Waltham Forest have spent a significant amount of their time in the last six months on exploring some of the issues around the disturbances that happened in UK cities last August. Most recently they have attended a Parliamentary reception around gang prevention and met with MP David Lammy. To read about how these young people are passionately engaging with key decision makers in their community click here

Come and learn from expert, multi national award winning young people in Haringey ‘How we successfully engage young people in our locality’.

Learn how you too can be effective in developing and building rapport, understanding young people’s needs, implementing effective quality engagement, accessing funds for youth and community projects, working successfully with the not so ‘hard to reach groups’ to get real positive outcomes and gain advice on ‘burning issues around youth and community engagement.

The Conference Programme is packed with hot topics and information on how to empower tomorrow’s community leaders and has a Panel filled with vibrant, dynamic and experienced speakers.

To book or for more information contact Marlon Bruce on 020 8489 4476, 07980 316 862 or email marlon.bruce@homesforharingey.org

YAs from West Somerset, based at Minehead Eye, took their skills on the road recently as they travelled to neighbouring County Devon to train local Councillors there. The YAs ran a series of thought provoking exercises and stimulated some debates around how young people and adults can forge closer working relationships. To read young trustee Sammy Webber's account of the training click here

Alongside Google, FutureGov and Livity, the Royal Society of Arts recently launched an ‘Interactivism’ Challenge for young people. Through this Challenge, they’re asking people of all backgrounds – young people, teachers, council officers, youth workers, social entrepreneurs and professional practitioners – to put forward their suggestions for how technology and the web can be used to help young people find the employment, education or training opportunities that are right for them. This could be anything from a website which directs young people to the job vacancies that suit their interests and skill sets, to a smartphone app which allows them to be in contact with mentors on the go. Ideas don’t have to be fully-formed and participants don’t need to have any kind of technical expertise.

Taking part is simple. Anyone thinking of posting their idea just has to follow three simple steps:

1. THINK: Think about the problems young people face in finding work, education or training

2. CREATE: Put forward your idea for a web tool or software app. Register on ‘simpl’ and then submit your idea on the Google Interactivism Challenge for Young People website. (Be sure to tick the box marked ‘Interactivism’ to enter it in the Challenge)

3. MAKE: If your idea is a good one, Google software engineers and social innovators will work together to build it into a working software prototype at a Hack event

The competition will be open until the 25th January, after which they’ll be shortlisting the best ideas and inviting those behind them to a ‘Hackathon’ weekend in February. At the event, participants will be paired with Google software engineers to turn their ideas into working software prototypes, with the winning team being awarded a set of Google Chromebooks for their efforts. They will also be coordinating voluntary assistance to help winning participants further develop their ideas after the Hackathon event. So get designing!!!!

Young people from Waltham Forest met with Ken Livingstone recently to discuss community issues and challenges with him. To read more about the event and our Waltham Forest YAs click here

A team of Young Advisors and young people from Catch22 met with the riots panel on Monday 24th October. You can find out more by clicking here and you can find out how you too could give evidence!

Merton Young Advisors have certainly been busy since they trained back in February 2011; they have spent an industrious six months forging closer links with local councillors, worked on panels for Positive Activity funding and completed training in order to undertake a research project for a Pan-London Safeguarding Children Culture & Faith Project. To learn more about their recent work read this case study or have five minutes with Daisy, a Merton YA, and read about the project from her point of view

Young people and the local council at Waltham Forest felt strongly that there should be a formal opportunity to discuss the recent rioting in London with youth groups engaged with the local authority, local councillors and senior members of the police force.

The event, organised by the Youth Involvement officer and Cllr Karen Bellamy, was incredibly successful with over 20 councillors and 20 young people attending as well as two senior police inspectors. It was moved to the council chamber because of numbers and the adults present were very impressed with the positive work that young people from the Youth Involvement groups had been doing. For more information click here

Responding to the recent UK riots, Sandwell hosted their very own Question Time event to debate the causes and discuss the solutions! With over 60 people attending – including young people, community workers, youth workers and organisation representatives – the event was a great success and sparked some very interesting discussion! For more information, click here

Our new West Midlands Young Advisors, trained at our recent Summer School, have put together a video based around the U-Turn project, Dudley. By exploring what's great about their neighbourhood, but also highlighting the things that need to change, they've put together the perfect example for any new Young Advisor of the value of the knowledge young people hold about their community. Check it out!

Young Advisors were commissioned by Andy Winning of the Dudley Community Safety Team to carry out an evaluation with the young people who were involved in the Staysafe project. The evaluation aimed to find out how successful and effective the scheme was in changing young people’s attitudes towards anti social behaviour along the issues associated to ASB.

To find out more, check out our case study.

We've been on our travels to the East Midlands recently to visit one of our newest teams, Leicester Young Advisors, as they support the work of their local National Citizen Service team. Check out our case study for more info!

Three Sheffield Young Advisors, Luke Ellie and Emma met with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg on 12th August 2011. Just days after the riots, they highlighted the positive work that young people do in the city. Check out the case study for more information!

Our team of Young Advisors in Marsh Farm, Luton, were recognised by Bedforshire police for their continued efforts to improve community safety. Check out the full story by visiting our new case study.